


Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh.

by lyryk (s_k)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Community: holmestice, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-07
Updated: 2011-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-25 23:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock doesn’t like guns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from T. S. Eliot’s ['Preludes'](http://www.bartleby.com/198/3.html). Written for [](http://goldvermilion87.livejournal.com/profile)[**goldvermilion87**](http://goldvermilion87.livejournal.com/) , who requested a Sherlock + John friendship fic, and originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/holmestice/37139.html) at [](http://holmestice.livejournal.com/profile)[**holmestice**](http://holmestice.livejournal.com/). Thank you to my awesome betas [](http://cen-sceal.livejournal.com/profile)[**cen_sceal**](http://cen-sceal.livejournal.com/) and [](http://authormichals.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://authormichals.livejournal.com/)**authormichals**.
> 
> *

They have followed their suspect into a church. It’s that strange time of the day when it’s not quite light outside but not dark enough to turn on the lights inside, and today’s not a day for a service, so the inside of the church isn’t lit.

There are candles at the altar. _There are always candles._ The consideration enters Sherlock’s head irresistibly, keeping enough in the background to not intrude on his main thread of thought, which is rapidly listing out the various places where their prey could be. Always candles. Always someone grieving, yearning, remembering. The tiny candle-flames are no more than pinpricks in the enveloping, musty atmosphere of the church. The place smells faintly of dead flowers and hymnbooks with yellowing pages and the dark, incongruously shiny varnish that coats the wooden pews, no doubt recently-applied in preparation for Christmas services.

Sherlock tries to let his eyes adjust to the semi-darkness, but his senses are too distracted. Something nags at his mind, ducking quickly out of sight as he tries to focus on it. He stops moving, and listens to the silence.

That’s what it is. It’s too silent.

 _John._ John’s the silent type, but he’s never this noiseless. No one is. There’s always something. The scuff of a shoe against the floor, the jingle of keys or coins in a pocket, the rustle of fabric. Something.

‘Sherlock.’ John’s voice is quietly apologetic and Sherlock knows what he’ll find even before he turns around.

John’s face is in the shadows. His captor’s weapon shines dully in the gloom. His arms are wrapped around John’s body in an embrace, one forearm holding John’s head pulled back, forcing him to gaze up at the ceiling. The gun is clutched in a steady, pale, long-fingered hand, the muzzle pressing into John’s throat. An artist’s hand, but then Sherlock had already known who the man was.

Sherlock doesn’t like weapons. It’s not a fact he’s shared with anyone because really, whom would he share it with? Certainly not John, whose military confidence would assume the utility of guns as much as it would the blueness of the sky, or the breathability of oxygen. In fact, he isn’t really sure that John possesses any of that unequivocal military thinking, because he’s never asked. And now, he may never get to ask.

_Stop it._

It’s John’s gun that’s heavy in his pocket now, that his hand curls around and clutches with almost overwhelming gratitude, that had still been warm from John’s hand when he’d handed it over and insisted that Sherlock carry it that day.

The killer’s talking: they always do. Something about who deserves to die and who deserves to live and who gets to decide. Impassioned, political, vindictive, righteous. Words spill from his lips into John’s hair like a lover’s endearments. Sherlock doesn’t hear a word. He is looking at John’s face, John’s eyes, staring blankly up at the ceiling as though he were already dead. Sherlock knows without needing to follow John’s gaze that the ceiling reflects an improbably symmetrical vision of the night sky, with the full moon dead-centre, surrounded by her starry fays. _Yes, Sherlock. Now’s the perfect time to think of literary references. Now, while your—colleague? doctor? friend? flatmate?—has a deranged killer holding a gun to his throat._

He pulls his hand from his pocket, levels the gun in John’s direction. He focuses his gaze carefully on the weapon, on its line of fire. It’s cold in his hand now. His hands are cold. He’s always known he was cold-blooded, but it’s never been as clear to him as it is now, when he’s pointing the gun at... his Boswell, he’d told John laughingly one day, reading his blog over his shoulder with no real interest. He’s never shown any interest in John’s writing in front of John. Allowed John to think of himself as a mediocre writer. Not said a word to indicate otherwise, to indicate that he’s spent hours reading and rereading John’s entries. Hacked into his account, even, impatient to read drafts that John hasn’t made public yet. And this, too, is Sherlock’s alone: this almost-apotheosis of his own self in John’s glowing words. This looking at himself from another person’s eyes, this making—no,  _reducing_ —John to a witness, this craving to be the centre of someone’s, anyone’s, world. This consuming inability to realise that the axis is, has always been, someone else.

A straight line, like a tightrope, joins the muzzle of his gun with the centre of John’s chest. A tightrope on which he is meant to dance, resplendent and mortified, in a costume designed to provide enticement to the audience rather than comfort to the wearer. He’s always been a performer. He thrives on it: the thrill of having an audience, of being _watched_.

The artist is still talking. It’s quite a speech, really. The man belongs in libraries, in lecture halls. He should be making audiences listen raptly. Instead, he’s about to—

‘Shut the _fuck_ up.’ Sherlock aims as he speaks, pulls the trigger before the last word is out of his mouth. Sound explodes in his ears like sudden fear, engulfing all his remaining senses for a frantic moment. Then the sharp smell of smoke and powder registers. Their artist—activist, fundamentalist,  _murderer_ —is kneeling in the nave, clutching his arm, blood trickling between his fingers.

It’s the wounded man who speaks first. ‘You could have hit _him_ , you madman. Don’t you have any respect for human life? You’re no fucking freelancer, mate. You’re as bad as the establishment. Collateral damage, right? That would have been your excuse.’ He spits out the words with fascinated disgust, eyes bright and sparkling with intelligence as he gazes up at Sherlock from his position on the floor. On his knees, like an eager lover about to get his mouth fucked.

John is still standing. He lets out a breath, pushes a steady hand back through his hair. _A doctor’s hair. A schoolteacher’s, even. Not a soldier’s hair._  John is still standing. It’s enough.  



End file.
